Letters From The Sea Tower

This year, I spent Christmas in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex and in all honesty, it was hard. It was sweet that Alex and I finally got to spend our very first Christmas together and it was sweet to have quality time with his family and take part in different traditions. But for the first time in many years, I didn’t get to take a starlight walk through a field and imagine the chorus of angels behind the silence. I didn’t perch atop a hay bale under a barn roof and journal with half-numb fingers about the glorious implications of lesser-known Christmas carols. There are no fields here, of course, and certainly no hay bales. What’s more to the point, there is no space for solitude in nature, and I’m finding more and more that productive reflection and rest is really difficult for me to achieve indoors.

One thing I did do was spend two full afternoons in an upscale shopping mall, hiding out in a bookstore and looking for some soul peace. On Christmas Eve, I was there the whole afternoon, thumbing through poetry books, vaguely looking for something to anchor my anxious heart.

The triviality of the world can be stifling and I think we all feel it at different times and in different ways. I feel it most when I’m in the presence of hopeless materialism, when I’m watching people get bogged down and burdened by the tightening chains of things that are without longevity, purpose or meaning. And of course, there’s nowhere like the mall if you want to get yourself a load of that.

One of the books I explored that afternoon in the bookstore was Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems For Hard Times. In his introductory notes, Keillor explains why he thinks poetry has something to contribute to people who are suffering. “The meaning of poetry,” he says, “is to give courage.” And that stuck with me. Because ah. That is what I chiefly need.

Since I couldn’t find any poems that spoke to what I was feeling, I started scratching out a brand new one, pouring my sadness and frustration into lyrical words. But, as so often happens, hope happened at the end of it.

This poem is meant to push back on the dangerous idea that what we’re up against today is somehow worse or less conquerable than what has been in the past. For a traditional artist like me, whose heart beats faster at the sight of hard-copy letters and old-fashioned style and the texture of paper, who feels a sadness in the pit of my stomach when I see isolation creeping into culture or the price of postage going always up; well, this is vital.

It’s vital that Jesus came into a horrible, horrible, world where nothing made sense and everyone was confused. Where truth was murky and beauty was treacherous and self-preservation was central. These things have always been, taking one form or another. And that’s vital.

It’s vital for post-Christmas, when we’re trying to get ready for the new year, for the sorrows that are inevitable, for the loneliness of being human, for the days when faith doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.

The title of the poem refers to the ornithogalum flower, also known as the “Star of Bethlehem.” I took an interest in it earlier this month when I was working on the January edition of the Letters From the Sea Tower. I wanted to make a little illustration for a striking line from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. In his exploration of the mythos of King Arthur, Tennyson employs the phrase, “wearing the white flower of a blameless life,” and I chose the small, unobtrusive, starry ornithogalum to be my model for the white flower. But as I began to write this poem, it came to me that if a white flower is a representation of a blameless life, there is someone who wore it far better than even King Arthur. Here’s to Him.

And without further ado, here’s my little poem. May it bring you some courage to face the shallowness of the world with limitless grace and cheerful defiance. May your life in some kind resemble the humble, white-flower life of Jesus.

STAR OF BETHLEHEM [Ornithogalum]

The world was just this way
when
Baby Jesus bloomed in the
crisp winter and the frost
couldn’t wilt him.

People then as now
were lost in the unnavigable maze of the self
little guessing there was
around any corner
a turn into a passage fragrant
with fresh air
and the urgent invitations of the gulls.

People then as now
were shelling out their small, limitless lives
for those briefest of commodities:
pleasure and applause

when Christ came low and
behold
the white flower of paradise opening
gently in the carpet
of the grass.

The past couple of months have been pretty quiet here on the blog, and that’s mostly because I’ve been pouring all my time and energy and passion into launching an enormous new project that’s unlike anything I’ve ever undertaken before. I just began sharing it with the world this month and I’ve never been this excited about any of my other creative ventures, so I just have to make a little announcement about it here too!

So here it is: I’m going to be producing a handmade monthly subscription letter that celebrates art and literature and how it matters for the Great Battle of Our Time. I’ll fill these letters with watercolor paintings and sketches, field notes from nature or history or my travels, and illustrated poetry or quotes from my commonplace book. My dream for this project is to produce a letter that fills people with courage and creativity. And I want to make gorgeous, high-quality copies of them and personalize each one and mail them out all over the world.

I remember when I was a kid getting letters in the mail was always a festive occasion. I had a few friends who wrote me snail mail letters and I basically haunted the mailbox whenever I knew one was on the way. Sometimes I would bring the letter inside but wait a few hours to open it, just because I wanted the anticipation to last longer!

Fast-forward to today and most of my mail now is bills and bank statements and political ads and grocery store coupons for items I’m not ever going to buy. I think that might be true for most of us. And I don’t like that. So over the summer I’ve began toying with an idea for how to use to my gifts and talents and interests to revive beautiful, meaningful, and unique hard-copy mail.

Because I know: the world isn’t always a glad place. What’s around us is sometimes so dark. And I want to do some little thing to bring the wisdom and the beauty of the ages right down into mailboxes and homes in a tangible form: fresh artwork on paper you can hold and hang up on the fridge and carry around in your pocket. I want to revive beautiful, meaningful, and unique hard-copy mail. I want to give people courage, because goodness only knows we NEED it. I need it every day. So that’s why I decided to begin writing the Letters From the Sea Tower.

The inspiration for the name of this subscription comes from “The Monsters and the Critics,” an essay J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about literary criticism of Beowulf. In his essay, Tolkien tells a little allegorical story about a man who built a tower on his property. His friends and neighbors thought the tower was a waste of valuable material, but they didn’t know that the man had built it in order to be able to see the sea. My hope is that these letters will offer a similar vantage-point as the tower in that story, that in the middle of our often dreary and monotonous lives, they will be a reminder of glory and unseen reality and a fleeting glimpse of “joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

I don’t plan to make these letters a highlight reel or a carefully curated collection of the happy things happening in my life. Instead, I want them to be a well of stories and ideas that inspire others to take heart and remember their callings. And I want to draw out the glory from ordinary things so that others can be inspired to do the same in their own settings, no matter where they are.

Over the past two months, I’ve spent many hours getting this project ready to launch and producing the first letter. It’s printed right here in my own home on thick, 100% cotton paper and packaged in the most epic envelope, with ink stamps vintage postage stamps. So far, I’ve sent out fifty-four of these letters to giveaway winners, subscribers, and friends, and I have another twelve going out this week. In order to make the letters as accessible as possible, I’m offering subscriptions for three months, six months, or a year, and if you’re not sure if this subscription is for you, you can even purchase a one-month trial subscription for just $12 (which actually comes with two letters, since it includes the intro letter as well as the next monthly letter!) If this sounds like something you might want to be a part of, check out the subscription listing in my Etsy shop to learn more.

The project will officially begin in January 2019 when I mail out the second letter, which I’m currently creating. Afterwards, a new letter will be mailed out each month. That means this is the perfect time to subscribe if you want to be sure you don’t miss out on any of the letters! The subscription might also be a glorious and meaningful Christmas gift for friends who care about literature and the arts. Several people have already ordered gift subscriptions and I work with each one to create a unique, handwritten note explaining the subscription to the gift recipient.

Eventually, my hope is that each month I’ll be able to mail some of these letters out to people who aren’t subscribers at all and might not otherwise ever receive anything like this. The initial launch for a project like is quite costly and so I’ll need a stable subscriber base in order to be able to afford to expand the reach of the letters in this way. However, as I invite you to participate with me in the development of this project, I want to let you know my full vision for where I hope to take these Letters From the Sea Tower.

I have lived in too many places and I'm homesick for the Far Country. I like thunderstorms, painting, calligraphy, fairytales and noisy crowds of children, and I write about literature, the good life, and the World’s Great Lover. In my spare time, I create calligraphy and illustrations celebrating literary masterpieces. You can find my work in my Etsy shop or request a custom order.

Letters From The Sea Tower

Subscribe to get my handmade monthly subscription letter celebrating the living power of literature and how it matters for the Great Battle of Our Time.